Green watched as Red organized his troops. By naming himself “the tongue of the Voice” he had gathered a significant following among the goblins. Green had offered to simply tell the goblins that Red was their leader, but he had refused; saying he wanted to do things “the old fashioned way.” Green still wasn’t sure what to think about that statement, but Blue had assured him it was actually a good idea. Blue was the newest addition to their collective consciousness. He was modeled after an old man that had been a common visitor to the dungeon over five hundred years prior. The man in question was a retired adventurer who taught fledgling adventurers by bringing them to the dungeon. Surprisingly, perhaps due to his status as a beginner dungeon, Green had very few examples of genuine strategists to work with; making this the best he could muster.

“Make sure they march in formation. If they pack together more densely, there’s a better chance the first rank will block attacks for the next rank. Also, their attacks will do more damage by compressing them into a smaller space.” Blue told Red. Red grunted in response, and passed on the orders.

Sixty goblins huddled together more densely in ranks of five as they practiced marching. Red surveyed their movements, and nodded. They were still inexperienced, but took instruction well. A whistle prompted them to stop, and they did. The cores had divided the goblins into ranks of five each, based on the premise that squads of five were standard for adventurer groups, and provided the best mix of numbers, and coordination.

[To your squads! Break!] Red shouted. The makeshift army obliged; separating into groups of five that milled about aimlessly. There was some squawking as Goblins realized they were in the wrong group, or bumped into other groups who had attempted to occupy the same location. Red sighed. “It’s a work in progress.”

Blue chuckled. “Don’t be too hard on them. It’s not as though we have much more of a clue what we’re doing.”

Red glanced downward at the core’s approximate location, and grinned maliciously. “I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m preparing us for war.”

---------------------------------

It turned out that all of Erin’s goblins wanted to learn magic. Every single one of them. Looking out at the sea of green faces from atop a mound of earth, Erin stood patiently as Gob repeated his instructions in goblin-tongue. It wasn’t strictly necessary. They understood his words perfectly well. Erin just thought there might be some benefit since they seemed more at home with their native tongue.

As Erin looked out over the group, feeling like a principal at a school assembly, he witnessed the first success. A patch of dirt rose slowly into the air, accompanied by a loud chirping sound that Erin interpreted as excitement. Thankfully, the fact that they already knew wind shot, which was a mana-dependent skill, made for a great starting point on teaching them the basics of manipulating mana. More successes appeared one after the other over the course of the next half hour, with Erin now sitting on his mound, playing with his own magic.

No significant breakthroughs were made, but he did construct a small statue out of dirt that he packed hardly enough to maintain its form. It was clearly a female form, but that was about as far as his limited artistic skills extended. Erin hoped it was enough to qualify as representing Almera.

“Almera, can you talk to me through this? I focused really hard on the idea that it was you while I was making it.” Erin prayed hopefully.

“Erin. I want you to know that I don’t blame you for what’s happening. I understand your situation, and I know how events unfolded to where we are now. That being said, I want you to know that you are in big trouble.” Almera stated dispassionately.

Erin nearly choked. “Wait, what did I do? Who am I in trouble with?”

“You’re in trouble with me. You don’t understand the implications of what’s happened do you? You’ve awakened a dungeon core to full sentience by throwing divine energy around thoughtlessly. Not only that, but in the process you’ve inadvertently birthed a race of truly immortal super-goblins. They don’t need to eat, drink or sleep. Due to being dungeon creatures, they have none of a goblin’s normal instincts toward laziness, arrogance, or cruelty. This is a world defined by infinite growth. With proper motivation, there’s nothing to prevent them from practicing their skills. Training endlessly day in and day out without rest for years or centuries until they become the most powerful fighting force in the world. They’re also perfectly capable of breeding. Did I mention that dungeon monsters retain full biological capability? Admittedly, their offspring won’t share their immortality, but it doesn’t matter. Goblins breed. It’s what they do. In fact if they were normal goblins, it would be their primary method of survival.” For the first time that he had known her, Erin could hear rage coming through Almera’s voice in pulses of pure fury.

“You really think this lot would do that?” Erin asked, gesturing at his colony of goblin pacifists who were staring fixedly at the ground as they tried to learn magic.

Almera snorted dismissively. “Probably not. They’re young for now, malleable, and with you in charge nurturing their growth I doubt they would turn out any different than most humans. They’re not the only goblins though, are they? You have what, maybe a third of all the goblins from the first floor of the dungeon? Even now, the dungeon is organizing its troops, preparing them to act like a proper army. Can you, by yourself, hold out against four hundred goblins that respawn endlessly, move like an army, and grow their stats dynamically at twice the speed of any human? Could you even manage it if every single goblin here fought with you?”

Erin’s eyes widened, head jerking to stare fearfully at the dungeon gate. “What do you want me to do? What can I do?”

“You need to reach the final floor of the dungeon, and destroy the core.”

“How many floors is that?” Erin asked with a sinking feeling.

“Every dungeon is a hundred floors, increasing in difficulty as they progress.”

Erin groaned, eliciting a concerned look from Gob before he returned to staring at the ground. “Ok, I’ve been meaning to ask this. Didn’t you say that you’re the goddess of sympathy? Why is everything related to the dungeons so ridiculously hardcore?”

Almera sighed, and Erin could feel the anger ebb from her in an almost tangible wave. “This is my first world. My only world. Prayers act as a kind of currency among the gods. With no other worlds to produce prayers for me, I had only the starting currency a god receives when they graduate their apprenticeship. What I’m saying is this was all I could afford.”

“Is that why the world is so dry? You couldn’t afford enough water or something?” Erin asked.

“No, that’s… actually entirely my fault. When I created this world, I set the dungeon dispersion to be properly random. That means there were also dungeons in the ocean. Well, one day a particularly gifted water mage got it into his head to explore, and document these dungeons. It was fine at first when he was just exploring low-depth areas, but as the relevant skills increased, he was able to go deeper, and deeper until eventually he reached a dungeon placed so deeply that the water pressure forced the door to stay open as the water rushed into the dungeon proper. Eventually, the door broke under the strain. After that, everything went strange. The doorway graduated to a full-blown tear in reality, and the dungeon malfunctioned; continuing to generate more and more instanced dungeon dimensions as water continued pouring in. I don’t think the mage even realized what he had done because he did it again, and again, and again. He mapped out every deep water dungeon he could find over the course of around forty years, and around half of the ones he found imploded this same way.”

Erin stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Why didn’t you do anything to fix it?”

Almera huffed in irritation. “I didn’t even know there was a problem until the oceans lost a hundred feet in height. Even if I had known, there’s nothing I could have done. Gods are forbidden from physically intervening in their worlds. We can guide our people with visions, we can add new systems to the world, and we can add people to it, such as yourself. That’s the extent of how we can interfere once the world has been created.”

Erin snorted. “Why? That’s just stupid.”

“It’s to prevent gods from gaming the system, and extracting prayers from their people coercively. Trust me, it was a lot more common than you might think back in the day. I think your own world suffered that kind of problem once upon a time.”

“So I’ve heard.” Erin remarked dryly. “One last question. How long have you been a god exactly? I get the sense you haven’t been doing this long.”

Almera huffed in irritation. “That’s an extremely rude question, but since you’re the only one I can currently rely on to solve the problems here, I’ve been this worlds god for thousands of years… from their perspective. From my perspective, not counting the time I spent training you, it’s been about a week. If you want to count the time I spent in training, you can add an extra month to that. Obviously I’ve technically been a god for longer than that, having divinity and all, but you get the point.”

“Oh. Wow. They don’t give more training for something this big?” Erin didn’t know how else to react to that statement. His life was in the hands of a complete newb.

“I’ll have you know I’m excellent. Only one god per year is chosen to become a world god. I worked hard for my position.” Almera retorted imperiously. “Obviously I had to study for years before I was even considered.”

Erin couldn’t help himself. “Sure. I’m glad all that studying stuck with you.” He said sarcastically.

“If you’re going to make fun of me then I won’t help you. Pray to me again when you feel like being civil.” Almera huffed before cutting the connection.

Erin chuckled quietly to himself. “What happened to that perfect blond goddess from when she summoned me?”